far to escape his own English climate, he has happened on a wetter example; he will not see the poetry of its dim distances, the pale beauty of its wan skies; he is annoyed and disgusted that the peasants wear dull blue, and the high-class people soft greys and mauves and browns, instead of the rainbow-hued kimonos he had looked for; and he is aggrieved when he visits his first gardens—expecting that there, at least, he will find the colour he has come so far to see—to discover that there are only little bits of country landscape that lie behind the picturesque gates, and that, as likely as not, it is all green—as Nature generally is.
The gnarled old trees are a deep and sombre green, the slender saplings are a delicate golden green (these two types so loved by this gentle nation, who venerate age and adore youth); the Pines are a rusty green, the new Reeds by the water are emerald green, the Bamboos and the Willows are silvery green; the stone lanterns, even, have their embroidery of mossy green, while the very lake itself, overhung by trees and shrubs, is of that cool green that only shadowed nooks know. But who, at first, thinks of even all this range and variety of green as colour? Where we had looked for a passion of scarlet Azaleas, a riot of purple Wistaria, a mingling of many-hued Lilies, and of Chrysanthemums that should not be like any that we had ever seen at flower shows at home—
